AMHERST — The rematch was tougher and had much more on the line, but the UMass men’s lacrosse team was up for it.
The Minutemen knew Thursday’s CAA Tournament semifinal against Hofstra wouldn’t be nearly as easy as their domination of the Pride six days ago.
Hofstra, especially senior goalie Jack Concannon, was too good for the Minutemen to cruise in the semifinals. Concannon, who was playing in what turned out to be his last college game, was outstanding. But UMass controlled just about everything else and held on for a 10-6 win at Garber Field.
Concannon, the conference’s goalie of the year, made 22 saves to break the CAA Tournament single-game record.
“We expected a game like this. Hofstra tried to prevent our transition game and did a nice job with it and their goalie proved he’s a fantastic goalie,” UMass coach Greg Cannella said. “He’s a returning All-American and played that way tonight. ... We had to grind and fight for everything we got tonight.”
The Minutemen advanced to Saturday’s 1 p.m. final at Garber where they’ll face Towson for the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The game is a rematch of the 2017 title game.
Towson beat Delaware, 8-7, in the second semifinal, which was delayed by the weather. UMass beat the Tigers, 8-4 on April 14.
Sophomore Jeff Trainor put the Minutemen up 1-0, 38 seconds into the game, but Hofstra got the next two to lead 2-1. Concannon had nine of his 22 saves in the opening frame and the Pride was effective in slowing UMass’ transition early.
But Buddy Carr sizzled a rising shot through a screen by Concannon to tie it with 3:22 left and then converted a Trainor pass just under a minute later to give UMass a 3-2 edge after the first quarter.
Carr passed his father Kelley (110 career points) on UMass’ career scoring list during the game. The senior attack finished with two goals and two assists giving him 113 in his career.
Hofstra had a chance to grab momentum with an extra-man chance early in the second, but Sean Sconone stoned Dylan McIntosh at close range with 10:23 left in the half.
Sconone’s 11-save effort may have been overshadowed by Concannon, but UMass’ junior goalie made a handful of big stops that prevented the Pride from ever getting a head of steam.
“He made two or three in the game where they took a quality shot and he gobbled it up,” Cannella said. “He’s been solid and we need him to be solid moving forward.”
Sconone saluted his counterpart.
“Jack played great. He’s a helluva player. He’s an All-American goalie for a reason. He played really well,” he said. “Our guys played great. It was an awesome game to win.”
The Minutemen stretched their edge to 6-3 at halftime. After the teams traded goals to make it 7-4 after three, Jake Lisauskas scored his second goal of the game to open the fourth for UMass.
Hofstra’s Dylan Alderman kept his team in contention with back-to-back tallies to cut the Minuteman lead to 8-6 with 4:15 left.
But short stick defensive midfielder Jake Marino scored with 1:33 left and Hofstra never touched the ball on offense again.
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage